1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a manual type card vending machine which dispenses a card upon insertion of a predetermined amount of coin or coins.
2. Description of Prior Art Technology
In recent years, cards displaying popular characters have been popular amongst children for collection. Various types of manual type card vending machines have been developed for selling cards displaying various characters.
Prior art manual type card vending machines which sell these types of cards have been designed to have width of 260 mm; on the bottom, depth of 350 mm; and height of 670 mm. Further, a coin return opening or slot has been employed for returning a coin and a coin insertion opening or slot for inserting a coin are located in the center of the front portion of the vending machine main body, or at its edge.
When purchasing a card, after inserting a predetermined amount of coins into the coin insertion opening, a handle is turned which is provided on the side of the vending machine main body. In this way, by turning the handle provided on the side of the vending machine main body, a card is advanced to a card dispensing opening where it can be taken out.
Since the prior art manual type card vending machine has the coin insertion slot and the coin return opening on the center line of the front portion of the vending machine main body, or on the edge of the front portion of the vending machine main body, a card information display portion occupies the area excluding the area occupied by the coin insertion slot and the coin return opening. For this reason, the area of the display for card information is limited and had a problem where an area for display relating to advertisement of the card is limited.
Further, where the coin insertion slot and the coin return opening are formed at the location on the center line of the frontal portion of the vending machine main body, the card information display portion is split in the center and it was problematic in that it was difficult to do an effective advertising.
Furthermore, the vending machine of the prior art apparatus is not only large, but also had a handle for taking out a card on the side of the vending machine main body so that where a plurality of manual type card vending machines are set side-by-side, the protruding handle on the side of the vending machine main body and its adjacent manual type card vending machine necessitate a sufficient amount of space therebetween for the operation of the handle, thereby requiring a larger area for their installation.
For this redson, it is possible to consider down-sizing the vending machine main body to lessen the setting area per one vending machine, but this is accompanied by a problem of smaller card information display area which is set in the front portion of the vending machine main body.